Culturplay, a gaming software studio devoted to promoting cultural heritage through playful learning, has collaborated with the Acropolis Restoration Service (YSMA) to develop the Virtual Tour of the Acropolis and Athens 5th Century. The Virtual Tour of the Acropolis is composed of high-resolution gigapixel images and panoramas of the Athenian monuments. In addition to detailed photographs, you will find descriptive information and maps helping you orient yourself on the acropolis. Athens 5th Century is a “political and philosophical strategy game that builds upon an intuitive simulation of ancient Greece.” Learn more about the game here.

The Museum of Modern Art has developed a new app for iOS devices. Features include museum and art tours with artists and curators, “My Collections” — a tool enabling users to create collections of favorite media and images, a calendar for browsing exhibitions, events and film screenings, museums directories and maps and the ability to share via email, Facebook or Twitter your favorite art, events or photos.

To learn more about this free app, you can read more on MoMA’s FAQ page. The MoMA iPhone App is available in the iTunes App Store.

MAN (Modern Art Notes) podcasts is a weekly podcast featuring artists, curators, art historians and authors produced and hosted by Tyler Green and Modern Art Notes Media. Every week they spotlight a new topic presented by an art historian, curator, artist, or author. This week’s podcast tells the story of how the Detroit Institute of Art’s curator Salvador Salort-Pons spotted The Infant St. John the Baptist by Bartolome Esteban Murillo, and how he and a team at the DIA helped bring it back to life. The story will be told with the assistance of Salort-Pons, art historian Jonathan Brown, Meadow Brook curator Madelyn Rzadkowolski, DIA conservator Alfred Ackerman and Oakland sophomore Holly Lustig.

The travel company Historvius has just released a new iPad app that allows users to explore Roman ruins without leaving the comfort of home. Sure, it would be nice to explore Rome’s ruins from Rome but sometimes that’s just not possible. If you can’t get to Rome in person, Roman Ruins HD makes it possible for you to explore over 100 Roman sites through 1500 plus images and Google street view. Roman Ruins can be browsed by site name, country, period, a map or by curated galleries and collections.

What’s the most popular picture on Pinterest? It’s not a cute kitten or puppy. It’s not a celebrity or a beautiful sunset. No, it’s Aunt Peggy’s Cucumber, Tomato, and Onion Salad. Read more about image optimization in Pinterest and Instagram here. Note: “Aunt Peggy’s Cucumber, Tomato, and Onion Salad” recipe not included.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the first photograph ever uploaded to the World Wide Web. And what a photo! Photoshop was clearly in its infancy as well. For the full story behind this historic image and the Cernettes who inspired it, check out the full article in Motherboard.

Google has teamed up with UNESCO, CyArk and the World Monuments Fund to introduce an exciting new resource that allows users to virtually explore and navigate world heritage sites through panoramic street-level images. The World Wonders Project uses Google’s Street View, Panoramio and Youtube to make sites like Pompeii, ancient Kyoto and the Palace of Versailles accessible to a global audience. Users can browse by location or by themes.

If you’ve looked at Google images recently, you probably noticed a new feature: Search by Image. Just click on the camera icon in the search bar or drag and drop an image into the search bar and Google images will search for and retrieve visually similar images. I’ve been testing out a number of images but here is one example: Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut “Two Men Plotting Points for a Drawing of a Lute in Foreshortening” (ca. 1525). Google image recognized the print as a Dürer and found visually similar images. It may not be as accurate as your art history professor but its a still pretty cool.

The Getty Foundation and the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage have released high resolution images of Jan Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece taken while the work was undergoing conservation in 2010. The project utilized high resolution macro photography under visible and infrared light, infrared reflectoography, X-radiography and dendrochronolgy to reveal valuable information on underdrawing, layer paint layer structure and other technical aspects of the altarpiece. Additional images of the conservation project will be made available over the next year.